CALGARY: Calgary voted Wednesday to keep alive Canada’s bid for the 2026 Winter Olympics after a last-minute funding deal was struck between Ottawa and the province of Alberta.
The next hurdle is a plebiscite on November 13.
After more than eight hours of often acrimonious debate, city councillors voted 8-7 in favour of a recommendation from the city’s Olympic committee to end their pursuit of hosting duties over a lack of cash from the central and provincial governments.
But it was not enough (10 were needed) to kill the bid.
Overnight Tuesday a deal between federal and provincial officials resulted in a proposal to fund most of the public costs, and effectively reduce Calgary’s share of the burden.
The agreement, which would see the original Can$3 billion (US$2.3 billion) public portion of the Games budget reduced by 10 per cent and, along with it, each party’s share of the costs, has been validated by federal Sports Minister Kirsty Duncan and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.
Hundreds of supporters of Canada’s bid, including former Olympians, most wearing Canada’s red and white colours, flooded into the Calgary city council chamber for the crucial vote.
Outside, they waved placards that read “Go Olympics” and “Don’t Luge this Calgary,” at times breaking into chants of the national anthem.
“We support the Calgary Olympic bid. Calgary is a world-class city. It would be great to host the Olympics in Canada,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Ottawa.
But at city hall, councillors said the proposal was “not viable and vetted” and based on “creative accounting,” while countering accusations of being spoilers.
Evan Woolley, chairman of the Olympic bid committee, said the funding deal had been struck too late to allow Calgarians to make an “educated decision.”
“If you look at the Olympic process around the world it’s divisive everywhere and I think that’s what happened here,” commented Councilwoman Druh Farrell, after several heated exchanges.
The host city of the 2026 Winter Olympics will be announced in June next year in Lausanne, Switzerland. A Calgary withdrawal would have left only Milan and Stockholm in the running.
The International Olympic Committee is facing a scarcity of applications for the Winter Games, with many scared off by the bill for Sochi 2014.
Several cities that initially expressed interest in hosting the 2026 edition pulled out after tepid support from their local populations.
As the last Canadian city to host the Winter Olympics in 2010, Vancouver lost tens of millions of dollars even though the US$7 billion cost was relatively modest when compared to Sochi’s US$50 billion.
Calgary, which previously organized the 1988 Winter Games, can save on facilities but new construction will still be needed.
Financing talks came to a head on Friday, when Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi threatened to end the city’s bid if the federal government didn’t provide more money.
“If we cannot come to a mutually agreeable conclusion by Monday, I deeply regret that I will have no choice but to request that Calgary City Council cancel the plebiscite and thus terminate the bid, an event none of us want,” he told the Calgary Herald.
Ottawa had initially held fast on its offer, saying it was in line with its share of the costs to host other major sporting events, notably the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto.
Under the new terms, it has agreed to pick up half of the cost, while Calgary and the province are expected to split the remainder. Significant savings were also found in revised security estimates for the Games, reducing the overall costs.